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The Signature of All Things (Hardcover)

Staff Reviews

I was surprised to be so taken in by this book. It just reminded me that I shouldn't make assumptions about my own reading tastes, let alone anyone else's. In Alma Whittaker, we get to see firsthand the frustrations built in to being born privileged and brilliant -- and a woman -- in the early days of the American republic. And Gilbert has also crafted one of those rare novels that presents the reader with a life, a full life, and keeps your interest the whole time. I haven't read one done so well since John Williams' Stoner.

— Emily

I was surprised to be so taken in by this book. It just reminded me that I shouldn't make assumptions about my own reading tastes, let alone anyone else's. In Alma Whittaker, we get to see firsthand the frustrations built in to being born privileged and brilliant -- and a woman -- in the early days of the American republic. And Gilbert has also crafted one of those rare novels that presents the reader with a life, a full life, and keeps your interest the whole time. I haven't read one done so well since John Williams' Stoner.

I was surprised to be so taken in by this book. It just reminded me that I shouldn't make assumptions about my own reading tastes, let alone anyone else's. In Alma Whittaker, we get to see firsthand the frustrations built in to being born privileged and brilliant -- and a woman -- in the early days of the American republic. And Gilbert has also crafted one of those rare novels that presents the reader with a life, a full life, and keeps your interest the whole time. I haven't read one done so well since John Williams' Stoner.

October 2013 Indie Next List

“This novel spans two centuries and offers the reader details of travel, adventure, love, family dysfunction, and science. Alma Whitaker is born in 1800 to a self-made man who becomes the richest man in Philadelphia. Alma is brilliant but homely, and during her long, loveless life she pursues the study of botany, ultimately proposing one of the first theories of evolution. Gilbert expertly tracks Alma's travels around the world, her struggles with her family and the man with whom she falls in love, and her desperate need to understand the mechanisms behind all life.”
— Kate Mai, Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, TX

Description

A glorious, sweeping novel of desire, ambition, and the thirst for knowledge, from the # 1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed.Look out for Elizabeth Gilbert's newest book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma's research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life. Exquisitely researched and told at a galloping pace, The Signature of All Things soars across the globe from London to Peru to Philadelphia to Tahiti to Amsterdam, and beyond. Along the way, the story is peopled with unforgettable characters: missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses, and the quite mad. But most memorable of all, it is the story of Alma Whittaker, who born in the Age of Enlightenment, but living well into the Industrial Revolution bears witness to that extraordinary moment in human history when all the old assumptions about science, religion, commerce, and class were exploding into dangerous new ideas. Written in the bold, questing spirit of that singular time, Gilbert's wise, deep, and spellbinding tale is certain to capture the hearts and minds of readers.

About the Author

ElizabethGilbert is the #1New York Timesbestselling author ofEat Pray Love, Big Magic, and several other internationally bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction. She began her career writing forHarper's Bazaar, Spin, The New York Times MagazineandGQ, and was a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award. Her story collectionPilgrimswas a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award;The Last American Manwas a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The follow-up memoirCommittedbecame an instant #1New York Timesbestseller. Her latest novel, The Signature of All Things, was named a Best Book of 2013 byThe New York Times, O Magazine, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, andThe New Yorker. Gilbert s short fiction has appeared inEsquire, Story, One Story, and theParis Review."

Praise For…

Praise for The Signature of All Things

“Gilbert has established herself as a straight-up storyteller who dares us into adventures of worldly discovery, and this novel stands as a winning next act. TheSignature of All Things is a bracing homage to the many natures of genius and the inevitable progress of ideas, in a world that reveals its best truths to the uncommonly patient minds.”—Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times Book Review

“[A] rip-roaring tale… Its prose has the elegant sheen of a 19th-century epic, but its concerns — the intersection of science and faith, the feminine struggle for fulfillment, the dubious rise of the pharmaceutical industry — are essentially modern.”—Steve Almond, The New York Times Magazine

“The most ambitious and purely imaginative work in Gilbert’s 20-year career: a deeply researched and vividly rendered historical novel about a 19th century female botanist.”—Alexandra Alter, The Wall Street Journal

“A radiant novel…that rare literary achievement, a big, panoramic novel about life and love…Like Victor Hugo or Emile Zola, Gilbert captures something important about the wider world in The Signature of AllThings: a pivotal moment in history when progress defined us in concrete ways.”—Marie Arana, The Washington Post

“A delightful book…one of the best of the year…Gilbert marries the technical, cultural and spiritual with a warm, frankly funny wit… This kind of storytelling is rare – one in which an author can depict the particulars of a moss colony as skillfully as she maps the landscape of the human heart.”—Lizzie Skurnick, “All Things Considered,” NPR

“Gilbert’s sumptuous third novel, her first in thirteen years, draws openly on nineteenth-century forebears: Dickens, Eliot, and Henry James…Gilbert’s prose is by turns flinty, funny, and incandescent.”—The New Yorker

“Engrossing…The Signature of All Things is one of those rewardingly fact-packed books that make readers feel bold and smart by osmosis. Alma commits her life to ceaseless study, but reading this vibrant, hot-blooded book about her takes no work at all.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Gilbert has mulled, from the confines of her desk, the correlations of nature, the principle that connects a grain of sand to a galaxy, to create a character who does the same – who makes the study of existence her life’s purpose. And in doing so, she has written the novel of a lifetime.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“A fabulous read…Gilbert has returned to fiction with a boisterous historical novel about a 19th-century botanist named Alma Whittaker…Alma’s fabulous brain is a hot pot of scientific knowledge, lonely feminist turmoil and erotic longing. All of which makes her an irresistible character to accompany through history and around the world.”—Helen Rogan, People

“Raucously ingenious…Signature is not just a historical novel that spans two centuries and many geographies…I found unshackled joy on every page…a novel of brave and lovely ideas.”—Beth Kephart, The Chicago Tribune